When we see records being broken and unprecedented events such as this, the onus is on those who deny any connection to climate change to prove their case. Global warming has fundamentally altered the background conditions that give rise to all weather. In the strictest sense, all weather is now connected to climate change. Kevin Trenberth

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Coal's hidden costs top $345 billion in U.S.

by Scott Malone, Reuters, Boston, February 16, 2011

(Reuters) - The United States' reliance on coal to generate almost half of its electricity, costs the economy about $345 billion a year in hidden expenses not borne by miners or utilities, including health problems in mining communities and pollution around power plants, a study found.

Those costs would effectively triple the price of electricity produced by coal-fired plants, which are prevalent in part due to the their low cost of operation, the study led by a Harvard University researcher found.

"This is not borne by the coal industry, this is borne by us, in our taxes," said Paul Epstein, a Harvard Medical School instructor and the associate director of its Center for Health and the Global Environment, the study's lead author.

"The public cost is far greater than the cost of the coal itself. The impacts of this industry go way beyond just lighting our lights."

Coal-fired plants currently supply about 45 percent of the nation's electricity, according to U.S. Energy Department data. Accounting for all the ancillary costs associated with burning coal would add about 18 cents per kilowatt hour to the cost of electricity from coal-fired plants, shifting it from one of the cheapest sources of electricity to one of the most expensive.

In the year that ended in November, the average retail price of electricity in the United States was about 10 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the Energy Department.

Advocates of coal power have argued that it is among the cheapest of fuel sources available in the United States, allowing for lower-cost power than that provided by the developing wind and solar industries.

"The Epstein article ignores the substantial benefits of coal in maintaining lower energy prices for American families and businesses," said Lisa Camooso Miller, a spokeswoman for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an industry group. "Lower energy prices are linked to a higher standard of living and better health."

HEALTH, ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

The estimate of hidden costs takes into account a variety of side-effects of coal production and use. Among them are the cost of treading elevated rates of cancer and other illnesses in coal-mining areas, environmental damage and lost tourism opportunities in coal regions where mountaintop removal is practiced and climate change resulting from elevated emissions of carbon dioxide from burning the coal.

Coal releases more carbon dioxide when burned than does natural gas or oil.

The $345 billion annual cost figure was the study's best estimate of the costs associated with burning coal. The study said the costs could be as low as $175 billion or as high as $523 billion.

"This is effectively a subsidy borne by asthmatic children and rain-polluted lakes and the climate is another way of looking at it," said Kert Davies, research director with the environmental activist group Greenpeace. "It's a tax by the industry on us that we are not seeing in our bills but we are bearing the costs."

The estimates came in the paper "Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal," to be published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Epstein discussed his findings on the Arctic Sunrise, a 164-foot-long (50 meter long) icebreaker operated by Greenpeace, and moored in Boston Harbor.

Leading users of coal in the United States include utilities American Electric Power Co Inc and Duke Energy Corp. The top producers include miners Arch Coal Inc, Consol Energy Inc, Peabody Energy Corp and Alpha Natural Resources.

Greenland's glaciers double in speed

The contribution of Greenland to global sea level change and the mapping of previously unknown basins and mountains beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet are highlighted in a new film released by Cambridge University this morning.

The work of glaciologist Professor Julian Dowdeswell, Director of Cambridge University's Scott Polar Research Institute, is the focus of This Icy World, the latest film in the University's Cambridge Ideas series.

A frequent visitor to both the Arctic and Antarctic, Dowdeswell's research has found that the glaciers around Greenland are the fastest flowing in the world.

He said: "There is evidence that some parts of the ice sheet have doubled in speed up to 10 km per year in the last decade. That means the contribution of Greenland to global sea level change is increasing."

"The numbers of icebergs released into the seas around Greenland is also increasing. We need to know just how fast these changes are taking place.

"Things are changing very rapidly here because the Arctic is the most sensitive part of the global climate system. Over the coming century, temperatures are likely to rise at double the global average here."

Professor Dowdeswell, who has spent a total of more than three years in the polar regions, also reveals that his work in Antarctica as part of an team of international scientists, using radar systems pioneered in Cambridge, has mapped sub-glacial mountains hidden beneath the ice sheet that scientists were not aware of before.

The Scott Polar Research Institute, a research centre within Cambridge University, has about 40 scientists and post-graduate students working on various aspects of polar research. Professor Dowdeswell's next polar trip, funded by a large grant from the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, will be in March and April to the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Airborne radar systems will be used to measure ice thickness and the presence of lubricating water at the ice-sheet bed. This should yield key information relating to the recent speed-up of the ice.

He said: The ice in Antarctica is an average of 2-3 km in thickness, with the deepest ice almost 5 km thick. It's changes in the volume of the ice sheet that will affect global sea level.

"Glacier and ice-sheet change is a reality at both poles. The ice is thinning and retreating and that means water is flowing back into the global ocean. Today, sea level is rising 3mm per year; over the coming century, sea level is likely to rise by up to about 1m and it's actually that rise -- with the worst storm waves you can imagine -- that could cause real damage.

"In those circumstances, sea defences can be breached and low lying areas of the world can be flooded. That has serious implications for humankind."

Republicans’ Anti-environment and Anti-energy Actions Detailed in New Report

WASHINGTON (February 28, 2011) – The Democratic staff of the House Natural Resources Committee today released “Dirty Work,” a comprehensive report on the anti-environment and anti-clean energy attacks in H.R 1, the House Republicans’ recently-passed yearly spending bill. The report, created at the direction of Democratic Ranking Member Ed Markey (D-Mass.), shows the skewed priorities and irrational attacks from House Republicans, highlights provisions in H.R. 1 which would affect existing environmental protections and clean energy development, from National Parks to climate science to clean energy R&D.

“H.R. 1 would not balance our budget, nor would it reduce our nation’s debt in any meaningful way,” the report says. “What H.R. 1 would accomplish, however, is to make the air we breathe and the water we drink dirtier, degrade our national parks, forests and public lands, further endanger already fragile wildlife, halt valuable scientific research, deny healthcare to the First Americans and deny access to justice for all Americans. H.R. 1 would turn back the clock, to a time when the desires of land speculators, coal companies and other polluters trumped the welfare of average American families. While it has been embraced by House Republicans, it should be rejected by the American people.”

The full report is available below.

The report includes valuable summaries of amendments to H.R. 1 and charts showing the cuts proposed by the bill. The Natural Resources Committee Democrats will continue to update the progress of these assaults on America’s air, water, parks and clean energy future as the budgetary process continues.

Washington DC - A New York Times article entitled "Regulation Is Lax for Water From Gas Wells" revealed that toxic wastewater byproducts of hydraulic fracturing, a drilling technique used to obtain natural gas, can contain radioactive contaminants at levels hundreds or even thousands of times the maximum allowed by federal standards for drinking water. In reaction, Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) released the following statement.

Hinchey co-authored the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act to eliminate the so-called 2005 Halliburton exemption, which prevents the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating fracking through the Safe Drinking Water Act. The legislation would also require the disclosure of chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process. Hinchey is also the author of language that initiated an ongoing EPA study to determine the environmental impacts of the drilling technique.

"The news that radioactive waste from the hydraulic fracturing process is being sent through wastewater treatment plants unequipped to handle it and then dumped into rivers and streams that supply drinking water to millions of people is alarming and must be immediately addressed. This story shows that the risks associated with this drilling technique are far too unknown and the current regulatory framework is far too limited to protect drinking water and the general public.

"Congress must take action to untie the hands of the Environmental Protection Agency, allowing it to assert proper oversight of the full life-cycle of the hydraulic fracturing process by repealing the egregious exemptions that this industry enjoys from our nation’s most important environmental safeguards. I will be introducing legislation in the near future to do just that.

"The EPA should immediately begin requiring states to monitor radioactivity levels at all drinking water intakes that are in close proximity to sewage treatment plants that accept natural gas drilling wastewater.

"We can't afford to take the 'wait and see' approach when it comes to radioactive, carcinogenic materials contaminating drinking water. Now is the time for all those who care about the safety of America's drinking water supplies to step up to the plate and protect it for future generations."

I wrote about the "Climategate" controversy (over emails stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit) once, which is about what it warranted.

My silent protest had no effect whatsoever, of course, and the story followed a depressingly familiar trajectory: hyped relentlessly by right-wing media, bullied into the mainstream press as he-said she-said, and later, long after the damage is done, revealed as utterly bereft of substance. It's a familiar script for climate faux controversies, though this one played out on a slightly grander scale.

Investigations galore

Consider that there have now been five, count 'em five, inquiries into the matter. Penn State established an independent inquiry into the accusations against scientist Michael Mann and found "no credible evidence" [PDF] of improper research conduct. A British government investigation run by the House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee found that while the CRU scientists could have been more transparent and responsive to freedom-of-information requests, there was no evidence of scientific misconduct. The U.K.'s Royal Society (its equivalent of the National Academies) ran an investigation that found "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice." The University of East Anglia appointed respected civil servant Sir Muir Russell to run an exhaustive, six-month independent inquiry; he concluded that "the honesty and rigour of CRU as scientists are not in doubt ... We have not found any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments."

All those results are suggestive, but let's face it, they're mostly ... British. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) wanted an American investigation of all the American scientists involved in these purported dirty deeds. So he asked the Department of Commerce's inspector general to get to the bottom of it. On Feb. 18, the results of that investigation were released. "In our review of the CRU emails," the IG's office said in its letter to Inhofe [PDF], "we did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data ... or failed to adhere to appropriate peer review procedures." (Oddly, you'll find no mention of this central result in Inhofe's tortured public response.)

Whatever legitimate issues there may be about the responsiveness or transparency of this particular group of scientists, there was nothing in this controversy -- nothing -- that cast even the slightest doubt on the basic findings of climate science. Yet it became a kind of stain on the public image of climate scientists. How did that happen?

None of those phrasings are wrong, per se, but all pass rather lightly over the fact that some actual person or persons put them on the internet, made them public, extracted them from the computers. Someone hacked in, collected emails, sifted through and selected those that could be most damning, organized them, and timed the release for maximum impact, just before the Copenhagen climate talks. Said person or persons remain uncaught, uncharged, and unprosecuted. There have since been attempted break-ins at other climate research institutions.

If step one was crime, step two was character assassination. When the emails were released, they were combed over by skeptic blogs and right-wing media, who collected sentences, phrases, even individual terms that, when stripped of all context, create the worst possible impression. Altogether the whole thing was as carefully staged as any modern-day political attack ad.

Yet when the "scandal" broke, rather than being about criminal theft and character assassination, it was instantly "Climategate." It was instantly about climate scientists, not the illegal and dishonest tactics of their attackers. The scientists, not the ideologues and ratf*ckers, had to defend themselves.

Burden of proof

It's a numbingly familiar pattern in media coverage. The conservative movement that's been attacking climate science for 20 years has a storied history of demonstrable fabrications, distortions, personal attacks, and nothingburger faux-scandals -- not only on climate science, but going back to asbestos, ozone, leaded gasoline, tobacco, you name it. They don't follow the rigorous standards of professional science; they follow no intellectual or ethical standards whatsoever. Yet no matter how long their record of viciousness and farce, every time the skeptic blogosphere coughs up a new "ZOMG!" it's as though we start from zero again, like no one has a memory longer than five minutes.

Here's the basic question: At this point, given their respective accomplishments and standards, wouldn't it make sense to give scientists the strong benefit of the doubt when they are attacked by ideologues with a history of dishonesty and error? Shouldn't the threshold for what counts as a "scandal" have been nudged a bit higher?

Agnotological inquiry

The lesson we've learned from climategate is simple. It's the same lesson taught by death panels, socialist government takeover, Sharia law, and Obama's birth certificate. To understand it we must turn to agnotology, the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt. (Hat tip to an excellent recent post on this by John Quiggen.)

Beck, Palin, and the rest of Fox News and talk radio operate on the pretense that they are giving consumers access to a hidden "universe of reality," to use Limbaugh's term. It's a reality being actively obscured the "lamestream media," academics, scientists, and government officials. Affirming the tenets of that secret reality has become an act of tribal reinforcement, the equivalent of a secret handshake.

In effect, the modern right has created is a closed epistemic loop containing millions of people. Within that loop, the implausibility or extremity of a claim itself counts as evidence. The more liberal elites reject it, the more it entrenches itself. Standards of evidence have nothing to do with it.

The notion that there is a global conspiracy by professional scientists to falsify results in order to get more research money is, to borrow Quiggen's words about birtherism, "a shibboleth, that is, an affirmation that marks the speaker as a member of their community or tribe." Once you have accepted that shibboleth, anything offered to you as evidence of its truth, no matter how ludicrous, will serve as affirmation. (Even a few context-free lines cherry-picked from thousands of private emails.)

Living with the loop

There's one thing we haven't learned from climategate (or death panels or birtherism). American society now contains within it a large, well-funded, tightly networked, and highly amplified tribe that defines itself through rejection of that society's "lamestream" truth claims and standards of evidence. How should society relate to that tribe?

We haven't figured that out. Politicians and the press have tried to accommodate the shibboleths of the right as legitimate positions for debate. The political press has practically sworn off plain judgments of accuracy or fact. But all that has done is confuse and mislead the broader public, while the tribe pushes ever further into extremity. The tribe does not want to be accommodated. It is fueled by elite rejection.

At this point mainstream institutions like the press are in a bind: either they accept the tribe's assertions as legitimate or they are condemned as "biased." Until there is a way out of that trap, there will be more and more Climategates.

“Hundreds of cops have just marched into the Wisconsin state capitol building to protest the anti-Union bill, to massive applause. They now join up to 600 people who are inside.”

Ryan reported on his Facebook page earlier today:

“Police have just announced to the crowds inside the occupied State Capitol of Wisconsin: ‘We have been ordered by the legislature to kick you all out at 4:00 today. But we know what’s right from wrong. We will not be kicking anyone out, in fact, we will be sleeping here with you!’ Unreal.”

As this long night comes to a end, I leave you with this final piece of good news from Ryan’s Twitter feed:

“Huge news! Republican senator dale shultz has announced that he is switching sides and opposing the bill!!! 2 more to go!”

Rock on Wisconsin. Remind the politicians who have forgotten, and the corporations in denial, and any folks out there who aren’t sure their voice really counts, that the true power of these United States is with The People.